BLIND AMBITION: Artist who lost sight, hearing teaches Dreyfoos students

Carlos Frķas

Wednesday

May 13, 2015 at 12:01 AMSep 21, 2016 at 3:11 AM

The moment it happened was when one student asked, “What if…?”

What if there were such a thing like a fine art museum where you could touch all the pieces? Where looking at the exhibits wasn’t nearly as important as interacting with them?

Where you could go room to room and let the artists speak through their work and make your literally feel what they felt? Touch it. Smell it. Hear it. Taste it, even.

And finally, they got to this critical understanding, the point of why they make art: What if to experience art you never have to see it, at all?

Told later about this impromptu discussion between her freshmen students at Dreyfoos School for the Arts one day last week, Emilie Gossiaux beamed.

SEE PHOTOS OF EMILIE’S WORK WITH DREYFOOS STUDENTS

It’s not just the kind of art that Gossiaux might make, herself. It’s the kind of art she particularly would appreciate.

Blind and deaf artist Emilie Gossiaux teaches a sensory art workshop at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida on April 22, 2015. Gossiaux, a former Dreyfoos student, lost her sight in an accident in 2010. Dreyfoos students learned to create art that you could feel, smell or experience. (Allen Eyestone / The Palm Beach Post)

Gossiaux, 24, a Dreyfoos art graduate herself, was blinded and nearly killed five years ago when she was hit by a 18-wheeler while riding her bike to the New York art studio where she worked. An ear infection had already stolen her hearing when she was a child, and she only hears marginally through her left ear thanks to a cochlear implant.

But plunged into darkness, Gossiaux never lost the burning desire to make art. Not when she had to leave New Orleans by herself as a teenager after her art school was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Not when she had to relearn to live — and live alone in New York City — with her guide dog, London, by her side.

And it’s that passion that shone through when she returned to Dreyfoos for the first time last week to spend four days teaching Dreyfoos students about making art when you can’t see or hear.

It was a lesson in making art in its truest form: art that will speak to someone through more than their eyes.

“I want them to think about their intentions when they make something, not just how it looks,” Gossiaux said.

Her freshmen students showed off the artwork their visiting teacher had inspired.

Tiago Abreu used hot glue to create Braille dots that read “blue” and “purple” in his piece of abstract art.

“I wanted her to know without someone having to tell her what the colors were,” he said.

Tessa Cole forewent color altogether. Her piece was made up of hot glue on paper to create something Emilie could feel and interpret herself.

“I tried to change the basic rules,” Cole said. “When she told us that art can be experienced, not just seen, it opened up so many doors.”

Ben Little started with an abstract drawing, but turned to carving a candle as he listed to Gossiaux speak. He sculpted several faces into a candle that Gossiaux ran her fingers over and deciphered.